A different kind of 'modern rock' radio in Boston

Saturday

May 24, 2014 at 6:55 PMMay 24, 2014 at 7:38 PM

Imagine my surprise when I stumbled across 88.9 WERS, a modern rock station that sounds like a modern rock station ... from 1983.

Pete Chianca

In this era of the corporate radio wasteland, where literally every other station seems dead set on unleashing a practically non-stop barrage of Katy Perry -- Katy Perry! -- onto an unsuspecting populace, I thought I was beyond being able to get excited about a radio station. The last time I recall getting even a little bit animated about radio was a few years ago when Boston launched a “We Play Everything” station -- the songs weren’t great, exactly, but they weren’t the same 50 songs that every other station was playing, so it seemed revolutionary. (Until the next format change, when the station switched to … Wait, let me check my notes … KATY PERRY.)

So imagine my surprise when I stumbled across 88.9 WERS, a station out of Emerson College in Boston. It bills itself as “modern rock and new music discovery,” so I figured it would feature mostly the songs on Rolling Stone’s college radio charts, of which I know maybe two on any given week and feel intensely proud of myself for doing so, because I am old. But as I started listening to WERS, it quickly became clear that while yes, it was a modern rock station, it was a modern rock station ... from 1983.

It’s true: This week alone I’ve heard tracks from the Police, the Clash, the Cars, the Psychedelic Furs, the Smiths, the Cure … It’s like I’m 15 again, except I’m driving and getting a regular paycheck (well, and married). Any other station playing 30-year-old songs would probably qualify as an oldies format, but let them call it modern rock if they want to -- as long as they’re playing “Canary in a Coal Mine” in regular rotation, I’m not complaining.

Beyond that, though, they play some songs that were NEVER modern rock, even when they were modern. The other day I heard “Lucky Town,” a 1992 song by Bruce Springsteen which I love, and which I’m pretty sure you would have had to waterboard the old WFNX DJs to get them to play. Again, not complaining, just pleasantly flabbergasted.

Maybe it’s because, while professional DJ George Knight handles the morning drive -- I remember him from his days at 92.9 WBOS, back when it was good -- it’s mostly Emerson students running the show. These kids weren’t even born when “Lucky Town” came out, so maybe they don't know it was " classic rock" the minute it was released - it just falls into the big jumble of old songs that sound vaguely cool to them.

And meanwhile, the “new music discovery” portion of the programming is actually good for, well, discovering new music -- it’s led me to seek out additional music by the likes of Lake Street Dive, Hurray for the Riff Raff and Courtney Barnett that I can pretty much safely say I would have never heard unless I stumbled over them online, or got an overly effusive email from their publicists. Plus, as a public radio station, there are no commercials -- and as a “terrestrial” station, I don’t have to pay for it. To paraphrase George Costanza, why should I pay when if I apply myself, maybe I could get it for free?

Granted, I know I have the largess of Emerson College to thank for this embarrassment of radio riches, and the chances are pretty slim that the corporate stations would ever adopt a model like this, seemingly aimed at the admittedly narrow demographic of people who were Psychedelic Furs fans in the ’80s but haven’t outgrown the idea of buying an album by Hurray for the Riff Raff. (Actually, when you put it that way in doesn’t sound so far-fetched.) I know that by and large, for anything even remotely out of the ordinary I’ll probably eventually have to break down and pay for satellite. But in the meantime, I'll keep my dial locked on those crazy college kids and their nonsensical free-form "modem rock" playlist -- or as we used to refer to it, “radio.”